Six

You come back to me in waves, in the small diamond pieces of light that reflect, wobbly and trickling, circling my peripheral vision. And, it is in the instinctual jerks of my body that I know you have left a mark— the dancing of my hands, flutter, pacing my time, a big blue breath. I’m not used to the kind of fishing where you catch and then don’t immediately kill, like those kahawai that were left stacked, the expansion and compression of breath between bones, letting their memories go. I thought back to last Christmas’s salmon, which emerged bending and swerving and still so young, I did not hesitate with the nail. If it’s going to happen anyway, I don’t want to wait at all.